There are lots of things that come easy with Thesis, almost like having all your favorite Genesis specific plugins in one Dashboard. I always appreciated that, but then almost everything has to be done via the dashboard. Thesis takes over in that regard. Thesis 2.X even more so than 1.X.

What I like about Genesis is being able to access all the files in the framework, easily creating specific page templates, etc, and as I port some existing site over I believe I will be able to be less reliant on 3rd party plugins.

Kind of a brief reply for a large topic. The take-away is I feel I have more flexibility with Genesis. Genesis seems to speak the same language as WordPress. Thesis requires learning a Thesis a specific language. “Language” here meaning “how things work.”